Kingdoms of Murandy
The Kingdoms of Murandy were a set of three Kingdoms in the vales of Carthien. 1st Kingdom of Murandy 2nd Kingdom of Murandy 3rd Kingdom of Murandy Murandian Revolts 1st Kingdom of Murandy (479-487) The first Kingdom of Murandy was a post-Kalagoric Kingdom set up by Tarwin Lugade. It, like so many others of the post-Kalagoric Kingdoms, would only last a few years before collapsing. Prelude: Tarwin Lugade, after making himself one of the most prominent Kalagorian generals in the Battle of Solumeskod, Like so many others, lead his faithful army of an estimated 200,000 men to Carthien, where his army took part in the Moumes'kar Talari, but unlike his fellow generals, he did not order his men to settle in Carthien, and sent them north to the then-thought inhospitable Murandy, where he hammered the final nail into the coffin at the slaughter of Tarwin's Gap, which is the considered the end of the Kalagoric Wars. He then set up a city, and a Kingdom on June 27th, 479. The city would be named Lugard, after his house, Lugade, and the Kingdom, Murandy after his dead wife Murandil. Reign: The first years of Tarwin's reign were plagued by chaos, and three serious issues. First, was the land. The other Kalagorian generals had been right in their assumption that the lands in Murandy were inhospitable, as only a few kilometres on the Murandian coast were farmable, the rest of the land a muddy mess close to the Haddon mirk, and he had 200,000 men to land and feed. Secondly, there was the problem of the wildmen. to the north, and in the muddy lands of inner Murandy there lived still the fierce people of the old world, who didn't look kindly to a new Kalagorian Kingdom in their lands. Thirdly, there were refuges. Carthien had, almost immediately after its settling broken into chaos. The ten generals who had founded various Kingdom there, were hard pressed to find enough land to feed their massive warrior populations, so they either tumbled into revolt or war in the Moulaviaren wars, and people who wanted to escape the chaos looked hopefully toward Murandy. But Tarwin was a crafty fellow. He first took his most elite warriors, and gave them the promised lands on the coast of Murandy. Next he took all refuges, and remaining warriors, and set them against the wildmen, allowing them to starve in the north and inner Murandy. There were multiple revolts by said armies, but by then they were already deep in enemy territory, or to weak to defeat Tarwin's Loyal and elite warriors. The only mildly successful one was the Ralasami army revolt, witch managed to create a small, Indipendent County in between Murandy and the north, but that more helped than hindered the Kingdom. With this move he managed to secure inner Murandy, by killing most of the wildmen there, and stabilise his Kingdom. Unfortunately his army was not big enough now to take advantage of the chaos in Carthien, but the next five years would still be prosperous, and grow its population. After Kolarinth united Carthien, he quickly marched his armies into Murandy, sieged Lugard, and after Tarwin died in an attempted sally-out, the city would surrender on May 16th, 487. But there was something that Kolarinth didn't count on. Tarwin's only daughter, Malihame still lived, and she would gather the Murandian army, and retreat into inner Murandy, using guerrilla warfare to defeat Kolarinth's armies three seperate times. 2nd Kingdom of Murandy (538-539) In the chaos following Koralinth's death, Malihames son, Tarwin II saw it time to remake his grandfather's old Kingdom. Reign: With the Koralinthian armies scattered across the word, and one-hundred different people with the slightest connection to Kolarinth claiming the throne, Tarwin II saw it was high time re-create the Kingdom of Murandy. And so, with 20,000 men, he marched on Lugard, but the garrison, being so close to Carthien was ready. 12,000 Carthienin were defending Lugard, and the hopes were grim for the Murandians. But in the second day of the siege, the Murandian army managed to make contact with a local Murandian in the city. The Murandians had been oppressed for many years, and on the fifth day, coinciding with the assault, riots broke out in the city. It was a swift and deadly victory for the Murandians. Nearly all of the Carthienin garrison were killed, while only about one-thousand Murandians were killed, most of them rioters. Two days after the capture of Lugard, on September 17th, 538 Tarwin II named himself king of Murandy. In the following days all of Murandy would bow to him, with the Carthienin garrisons, noblemen, and merchants either being killed or captured by Murandian revolutionaries or Tarwin II's army in what is now called The killings of Braem, a small town were all Carthienin nobles were rounded up and burned at the stake. Tarwin, who had a certain air of overconfidence after the victories in Murandy, marched his army south, hoping to take advantage of a fractured Carthien. Unfortunately, when he got there, he found that under the threat of foreign invasion, the lords of Carthien had flocked to the banner of Beladora, daughter of Kolarinth, and at the battle of Jarida January 29th, 539 Tarwin was decisively defeated, though he escaped with his life. He then retreated his army into inner Murandy, and used the same guerrilla tactics that his mother used to keep his army alive. The Murandians were treated even worse than before, and Beladora used this victory to her leverage, saying that it proved she was the rightful heir to Kolarinth. 3rd Kingdom of Murandy (702- ) The third Kingdom of Murandy was set up by Arid'hol II following the collapse of the Carthienin Empire. It, unlike its predecessors, would manage to keep its independence from Carthien. Liberation of Murandy: After the disastrous siege of Kalayahorn's Keep, the Carthienin Empire erupted into a succession crisis, and the subsequent northmen invasions of Kalayahorn and Wulfgar would do nothing to help. Wulfgar's invasion was set towards Carthien, and so he needed to pass through Murandy in the process. Lugard fell to him in a matter of days, as the small Carthienin garrison could not withstand Wulfgar's assault on the walls. The city was subsequently sacked, and Wulfgar moved forward. But Tarwin's predecessors had not been idle. Over the past hundred and fifty years after the collapse of the 2nd Kingdom of Murandy they had signed agreements with the remaining wildmen in Inner Murandy, Offering them inner Murandy in exchange for help against Carthien. After the sacking of Lugard, a semi-united army under Arid'hol II (Great grandson of Tarwin II) and High jarl Rodomar I marched toward Lugard, easily capturing it, on August 29, 702 Arid'hol II claimed the 3rd Kingdom of Murandy, Giving him the nickname "The liberator". But neither Arid'hol nor Rodomar planned to keep this uneasy peace. and two days after the recapture of Lugard, one of Arid'hol's drunken men hit one of Rodomar's men. This quickly escalated to a full-on battle in the streets of Lugard. Rodomar, whose army was being attacked by locals as well as Arid'hol's army, ordered a retreat out of the city after suffering an arrow to the chest. Rodomar and his army would retreat into inner Murandy to lick their wounds. But Arid'hol had a problem on his hands. The northmen, after Sacking Carthien, were coming back, and a retreat out of Lugard would put his army into battle with Rodomar, on unfavourable ground. So he sent a letter to Rodomar. He offered peace, and a sizeable chunk of upper Murandy, in exchange for his help. Rodomar pondered the letter for a few days, until accepting it. He also pulled in other wildmen chiefs to swell his army size, making it larger than Arid'hol's army. The Murandian alliance met Wulfgar's army at the battle of Sacrolyr, Where Wulfgar would die, and his army be destroyed. But after the battle (In which Rodomar's army would suffer heavy casualties) the two armies of Arid'hol and Rodomar were about the same size, and the men tired of battle. So Rodomar's plans of conquering Murandy were quashed, as was Arid'hol's dream of a united Murandy. Early chaos and Carthienin Invasion: After Securing murandy Arid'hol began land reforms and exiled all of the remaining Carthienin in Murandy, while Rodomar set-up the Jarl'Multakar or the Jarldom of Upper Murandy as it was known. Arid'hol was forced to forfeit his plans of an invasion of Carthien due to Rodomar's army size, and neither of them were sure how long the peace between Rodomar and Arid'hol was to last. What nobody expected was for Rodomars chest wound to be infected, killing him only twelve days after naming himself Jarl of Upper Murandy. Upper Murandy was plunged into chaos as the wildmen chiefs ward amongst themselves for the throne of Upper Murandy. Arid'hol quickly took advantage of this situation, asking them either to bow to him as King of Murandy or die. Surprisingly, most of the chiefs begrudgingly took the offer, while the rest of them fled into inner Murandy. Thus Inner Murandy would never be his, and the northern lords of Murandy never quite under his control, only sending their armies if they themselves were in danger, and never sending him almost any taxes. But Arid'hol could only tolerate this as he had a much bigger threat on the horizon: Carthien. Twice already the Carthienin had crushed an independent Murandy, And Carthien had gathered under a new leader: Barthanes Damodred, who, although named King of Carthien, still desperately needed any shred of legitimacy if he wanted any sort of recognition. Murandy was his chance. So Barthanes and Arid'hol gathered their armies, and would meet at the battle of Tarwin's gap. Barthanes was defeated, but with heavy casualties on the Murandian side, trashing any hopes of a Murandian invasion of Carthien. Still, they won, and Carthien was, once again, plunged into civil war. The Kingdom: Arid'hol II would rule Murandy till the end of his days, reforming, making succession laws, and seeing to the prosperity of Murandy. He would try to gain complete control of upper Murandy in a diplomatic campaign, but this would ultimately backfire, ending in the treaty of Sydispod in which the chiefs of upper murandy would stay, legally, a vassal of Murandy, but Arid'hol could not tax them or gain any better control over them. still, his reign was prosperous. He would die in his bed on April 16th, 761 at the old age of 82. His grandson, (his son died in the battle of Tarwin's Gap) Tarwin IV would have a more troubled reign, as the Carthienin would set an embargo on him, plunging Murandy into an economic pothole, and Tarwin would be forced to make land concessions in northern Carthien in exchange for the lifting of this embargo. He would also suffer troubles with the whitecloaks in an attempted expansion into Murandy, ultimately ending in Tarwin killing fifty whitecloaks in Lugard, and sending the rest away. In the end, his reign, although not perfect, ended in a more prosperous Murandy. He would die on June 27th, 803. After this his first son, Tarwin V inherited the throne, but he would be assassinated by his brother, Arid'hol III on december 7th, 804. Arid'hol III's reign would be a long one, after defending against a Carthienin incursion, he would begin the construction of the Fortress of Fal Arid, Named after himself, at Tarwin's gap. He would die on February 2nd, 838. Murandy continued to grow without to much trouble from the Wildmen and Carthienin for the next hundred years under the reigns of Taralas, Tarwin VI, and Malihame II. Murandian revolts: Between the three kingdoms of Murandy (mainly the second and third) the Murandian people would be oppressed under a Carthienin minority, and many times this anger turned into open revolt, most famous of these is the second great Murandian revolt (599-603) Earlier revolts: After the fall of the first kingdom of Murandy, (at first) Koralinth respected the Murandians, as neither the Carthienin, nor the Murandians had developed an identity yet, and most Murandians din't see much of a difference between one ruler and another, thats not to say there weren't any revolts, and by the end of Koralinth's days the Murandians were being taxed heavily by Carthienin land owners, and resentment was at a fever pitch when the second Kingdom of Murandy rolled around.